Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Pandurang Shastri Athavale, fully Pandurang Vaijnath Shastri Athavale

To achieve progress and development it is necessary to bring about co-ordination between liberty and security through Devotion.

Liberty | Progress | Security |

Richard Grant White

She wants her silence to be final. Here, more than anyplace else, she wants her memory uncontested. She does not want me talking to others, gathering other stories, looking into the remnants of my father's past. When she is silent, she wants those things about which she refuses to speak to remain as quiet as the tomb. That is the ultimate power of stories. They take on themselves the decision about what will be remembered and what will be told. The part of the past she claims most fiercely is the part she wants forgotten.

Decision | Memory | Past | Power | Quiet | Silence | Talking | Wants | Will |

Jim Wallis

Our choice is between cynicism and hope. Hope is a decision you make. Hope means believing in spite of the evidence and then waiting for the evidence to change. Be the ones that we have been waiting for.

Choice | Cynicism | Decision | Evidence | Hope | Means | Waiting |

Richard Cobden

You have no security for a man who has no religious principle.

Man | Security |

Richard Heinberg

The United States maintains a globe-spanning network of over 800 military bases that formerly represented tokens of security to regimes throughout the world

Security | World |

Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon

I refuse to make a decision that somebody else can make. The first rule of leadership is to save yourself for the big decision. Don't allow your mind to become cluttered.

Decision | Mind | Rule | Leadership |

Richard Neustadt, fully Richard Elliott Neustadt

Presidents and other decision makers usually get the intelligence they want. This doesn't mean that intelligence reports should be ignored, but that they must be viewed with skepticism.

Decision | Intelligence |

Richard Whately

Man is naturally more desirous of a quiet and approving, than of a vigilant and tender conscience--more desirous of security than of safety.

Quiet | Security |

Richard Whately

The best security against revolution is in constant correction of abuses and the introduction of needed improvements. It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.

Neglect | Revolution | Security |

Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon

The student who invades an administration building, roughs up a dean, rifles the files and issues 'non-negotiable demands' may have some of his demands met by a permissive university administration. But the greater his 'victory' the more he will have undermined the security of his own rights.

Administration | Security | Will |

Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon

I was under medication when I made the decision not to burn the tapes.

Decision |

Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon

My own view is that taping of conversations for historical purposes was a bad decision on the part of all the presidents. I don't think Kennedy should have done it. I don't think Johnson should have done it, and I don't think we should have done it.

Decision | Think |

Robertson Davies

We have educated ourselves into a world from which wonder, and he fear and dread and splendor and freedom of wonder have been banished. Of course wonder is costly. You couldn't incorporate it into a modern state, because it is the antithesis of the anxiously worshiped security which is what a modern state is asked to give. Wonder is marvelous but it is also cruel, cruel, cruel. It is undemocratic, discriminatory and pitiless.

Antithesis | Dread | Fear | Freedom | Security | Wonder | World |

Robert Byrd, fully Robert Carlyle Byrd

The money the president wants to borrow for Iraq will come directly out of the American taxpayer wallets in the form of Medicare and Social Security receipts. That's your money.

Money | Security | Wants | Will |

Robert Byrd, fully Robert Carlyle Byrd

Congress should be approving a more robust homeland security bill.

Security |

Yitzhak Shamir, born Icchak Jaziernicki

I considered the prevention of war as the test of our security policy; in addition to being able to rapidly and forcefully end any war forced upon us.

Security | War |

Robert W. Fuller, fully Robert Works Fuller

When the power inherent in a position of authority is used to fortify that position, the institution's purpose is subverted. Behaviors are not aligned with the institution';s professed goals; rather they are skewed to preserve the rank, power, salaries, and security of rank-holders.

Authority | Position | Power | Purpose | Purpose | Security |

Samuel ha-Nagid, born Samuel ibn Naghrela or Naghrillah

Is there a sea between me and you, that I should not turn aside to be with you, that I should not run with a troubled heart to sit at your grave-side? Truly, if I did not do so, I would be a traitor to our brotherly love. O my brother, here I am, facing you, sitting by your grave, and the grief in my heart is as great as on the day you died. If I greeted you, I would hear no reply. You do not come out to meet me when I visit your grounds. You will not laugh in my company, nor I in yours. You cannot see my face, nor I yours, for the pit is your home, the grave your dwelling-place! First-born of my father, son of my mother, may you have peace in your final rest, and may the spirit of God rest upon your spirit and your soul! I am returning to my own soil, for you have been locked under the soil. Sometimes I shall sleep, sometimes wake—while you lie in your sleep forever. But until my last day, the fire of your loss will remain in my heart!

Day | God | Mercy | Security | Spirit | Will | God |

Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

Lord of the world, O hear my psalm, And as sweet incense take my plea. My heart hath set its love on Thee And finds in speech its only balm. This thought forever haunts my mind, Some day to Thee I must return, From Thee I came and backward yearn My very fount and source to find. Not mine the merit that I stand Before Thee thus, since all is Thine, The glorious work of force divine, No product of my heart or hand. My soul to Thee was humbly bent Even before she had her birth, Before upon the sphere of earth Her heav’nly greatness made descent.

Day | Decision | Evil | Imagination | Judgment | Justify | Man | Righteousness | Scandal | Spirit | Work |